/lit/ - Literature

Just finished this. Holy fuck was it good. Let's rank the stories. For me it's
>Funes the Memorious
>The Library of Babel
>Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
>The Circular Ruins
>Three Versions of Judas
>The Secret Miracle
>The Lottery in Babylon
>The Garden of Forking Paths
>Theme of the Traitor and the Hero
>The Form of the Sword
>Death and the Compass
>An Examination of the Work of Herbert Quain
>Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius
>The Approach to Al-Mu'tasim
>The Sect of the Phoenix
>The End
>The South

Why is this book so hard to read? I'm starting to realize I'm a brainlet because it takes so fucking long to even understand one page in this book sometimes.

>try to read philosophy
>be a native english speaker but essays are not that easy to understand, feels like i'm not understanding it completely
>reading pic related
>feels like reading philosophy
how do i become a better reader?

i can read popular modern fiction (e.g. game of thrones) and nonfiction (e.g. guns, germs and steel) very easily, but some books actually seem harder to read (e.g. philosophical works)